Lovely Writing System

89 Implementing the First Suggestion

(A/N: Surprise! Here's a second chapter of LWS and it won't be the only one of its kind. 😉 Do you remember that I had asked you a while back whether or not I should make LWS my primary project instead of OMF?
Well, I got mixed responses (and mostly people telling me that they were alright with whatever I decided to do 😊) and so decided to try a different approach. So from now on, there'll be a slight change to my release schedule:

On weekdays you'll get 2 chapters of OMF and 1 chapter of LWS and on the weekend you'll get 2 chapter of OMF and 2 chapters of LWS. So, overall there'll be 14 chapters of OMF and 9 chapters of LWS per week.

Please bear in mind that I'm a little ahead with the OMF releases on my website so the 2 chapters on the weekend are a "for now" thing. When we catch up, that'll be just 1 chapter just like I'm already doing it on my website right now.)

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Just to make sure that nothing went wrong Su Yan actually made another copy before looking at the places with flashbacks more closely. Soon enough, he noticed that he had quite the big problem: The whole story was more or less a flashback!

Su Yan rubbed his head, making his hair stick out in all directions. "Shit!" He had originally started with a short scene of the time when Yun Bei Fen was raging because of Mei Chao Bing's kiss and only then told how it had come to this. "I definitely can't leave it like this."

He pursed his lips and copied the old first scene. This shouldn't be too difficult. He just had to paste it before the last scene between the kiss and Yun Bei Fen's final approval. With that, the story would progress linearly again.

Su Yan read the end of the previous scene and the beginning of this one before taking a look at how the newly inserted scene matched with the following last scene. It looked alright to him. He could leave it at that for now. In the end, he'd probably read over everything again anyway. He could still make some slight changes then.

Now, he'd just have to change the beginning of what had been the second scene originally. Well, with moving the first scene away and writing a new first scene it was the second scene once again, though. Unfortunately, the beginning still read like this was a memory so he'd have to change that to a time-skip from the new first scene.

He deleted the first sentence of the scene and instead wrote another transition for the scene: [Always remembering that white-clad figure in his heart, Yun Bei Fen worked hard until he, too, had become a disciple clad in white that the junior martial brothers and sisters looked up to. He hadn't managed to get close to his idol though and it seemed like this day would mark the day where he actually managed to offend him.]

With a smile, Su Yan read the next paragraph. Disregarding some wordings it fit surprisingly well. He congratulated himself and just continued to read. The next problem was indeed the mention of Mei Chao Bing's master. Well, even the introduction of Mei Chao Bing himself didn't match the new beginning of the story anymore. It seemed he'd have to change more than he thought. He immediately came up with an idea for that though.

[This was his idol, the person he had looked up to for so many years. His heart hurt seeing him ignored by the other disciples like this.]

Su Yan stopped after writing just these two sentences. The system didn't want any flashbacks so he'd have to reduce the role of Mei Chao Bing's master. Maybe he should also skip the explanation why he was treated so? But then Mei Chao Bing's image in the minds of the readers would probably not be the same anymore.

"I should probably leave it in there but cut it down a bit. Maybe I can even relate it to Mei Chao Bing more ..." His fingers once again touched the keyboard.

[Yun Bei Fen knew that the reason people steered clear of him was because of senior martial brother Mei's master who had dared to betray the sect. He was now one of their opponents, a heretic practitioner that might very well kill some of them if they were unlucky enough to meet him on the battlefield.

Yun Bei Fen understood this but he felt that it wasn't right.]

Su Yan nodded with satisfaction and read the rest of the scene. There wasn't anything he felt should be changed. In fact, even the next part where Mei Chao Bing reminisced about his master seemed good to him. The problem was the long flashback about how he noticed his master's betrayal.

Su Yan read the part twice but couldn't decide what to do. He felt that this was important to the story but it messed up the continuity of the storyline. Argh! What to do!

Su Yan looked around and finally took out his phone and opened WeChat. He started typing a message to Nie Chang. Just when he had reached the middle, he stopped though. What was he even doing? He couldn't always ask Nie Chang. He had always decided alone what to do with his stories. There was no need to consider Nie Chang's opinion on this. He probably didn't even read this kind of story.

Su Yan put his phone away with a sigh and stared at the screen a while longer. Keeping it? Deleting it? He found it great but the system had said to have a linear storyline and that sounded logical.

Su Yan grimaced, selected the text and decisively deleted it. Well, he did leave the first and the last paragraph. This wasn't exactly a flashback but more like Mei Chao Bing's thoughts, wasn't it? It should be allowed to keep it in.

He edited the remaining part a bit to make it fit with the rest of the text and then read the next scenes.

Before he knew it Su Yan had arrived at the end of the story. It seemed ... there wasn't anything more he'd have to cut out? He blinked unbelievingly and scrolled through the text once more but nothing changed: He couldn't find anything that broke the continuous flow of the story.

So, did this mean he had already managed to implement the system's first suggestion? This was great!

Su Yan perked up. Mn, then for the second and third ... He was supposed to describe more, so he'd need to add some things. He could exceed the limit of five-thousand words but he still felt like he shouldn't be too outrageous with this. Thus, the first thing he did was having the program count the words for him again.

The result left him speechless though: He had already exceeded the previous limit by around five-hundred words. Oh wow. How had this story already gotten so long even without all the twists and turns he had thought of? And he had even killed one of his favorite scenes ...